An IRS employee tasked with trying to restore and obtain emails on Lois Lerner’s IRS computer’s hard drive was legally blind. Stephen Manning, the deputy chief information officer for strategy and modernization at the IRS, submitted an affidavit in the True the Vote vs. IRS litigation regarding the persons and procedures used to attempt to recover Lois Lerner’s hard drive containing emails pertaining to Tea Party targeting.

The affidavit can be read here. Paragraph 14 describes the educational background of the person searching for data on Lois Lerner’s hard drive:

“According to the Specialist, prior to joining the Internal Revenue Service … training was completed through Lions World Services for the Blind.”

Sources familiar with the litigation confirm to me that the government confirmed that the IRS employee searching for the lost data was legally blind.

It was also revealed today that backup tapes of Lois Lerner’s emails were discovered in an off-site storage facility in West Virginia. The inspector general of the Treasury Department learned that the tapes existed and drove to West Virginia to retrieve them. Lawyers for the Justice Department as well as IRS officials have stated under oath or to the federal courts that no such backup tapes existed. They were “recycled,” DOJ lawyers told the court.

Haven’t we seen this movie before?

Government officials working with leftist organizations decided to target the president’s political opponents just before the president faced reelection. When the bad behavior is discovered, top officials in the administration and at the Justice Department use their power to hide the truth about the targeting of political opponents. Officials at the Justice Department fight disclosure of information about the administration’s wrongdoing. They even deny that tapes exist documenting communications about the wrongdoing by top government officials. We then learn the stunning news that tapes with all of the information detailing who knew what and when, actually do exist.

Next we’ll hear that the backup tapes in West Virginia have a 17-minute gap.

One of the few applause lines Jeb Bush got at CPAC was when he said he’d fight affirmative action. The only problem with that claim is that when given the chance as Governor, Bush opposed efforts to end affirmative action in Florida, calling those organizing against it “extremists” and “divisive.”

One person who has fought affirmative action is Jennifer Gratz. Nobody can hold a candle to her when it comes to opposing racial preferences. She writes this damning piece about Governor Bush that doesn’t square with his CPAC rhetoric.

In the emails, Bush describes his concern that a possible voter initiative in 2000 to end race preferences in state government hiring, contracting and public university admissions would be a “distraction” and “divisive”. He pledged to “do my part as governor to fight against it”.

The emails paint an unflattering portrait of a governor who claims to oppose race preferences, but considers citizens seeking to ban them through a petition drive as divisive extremists. Bush describes his watered-down initiative that restricted some race preference policies as tactical and necessary to preempt the looming citizen petition effort.

Journalist James O’Keefe has struck the Al Sharpton universe. On hidden camera, Sharpton allies say Sharpton is all about the “shakedown” and raising money. These are statements from allies and self-described “friends” of Sharpton.

After learning they were captured on hidden camera disparaging Sharpton, some friends of Sharpton denied they said what they clearly said to the hidden camera.

Sharpton’s organization, the National Action Network, also badgered the families of Eric Garner to place NAN’s logos on flyers relating to Garner’s death. Erica Snipes, the daughter of Eric Garner, is caught on hidden camera saying that Sharpton is all about the money, rubbing her fingers together.

Jean Petrus, a Brooklyn businessman who has supported Sharpton and calls him a “friend,” says of Sharpton:

“He knows how to make money and get money. They’re shakedown guys to me. You know, let’s call it what it is, they’re shakedown.”

After learning that his disparaging comments were captured on hidden camera video, Petrus called the O’Keefe video “an entrapment situation.”

Cornell Brooks, national president of the NAACP, delivering sermon at the New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church on Sunday, Jan. 25, 2015. Brooks was in Colorado Springs because of attempted bombing media alleged occurred at city’s NAACP office. (AP Photo/The Colorado Springs Gazette,Jerilee Bennett)

We’ve seen this story before. The FBI has released an affidavit regarding the detonation of an explosive device in Colorado Springs. Thaddeus Murphy has been arrested for detonating the device. The affidavit states he was targeting a tax preparer with whom he had a serious grudge.

But you’d never know that if you read the Huffington Post or Washington Post. If you read those and other outlets, you’d suspect that the bombing was directed at an NAACP office in the same building. After all, Rep. John Lewis said the event “reminded him of another period” in history.

That must be the period where disgruntled idiots bomb their tax preparer’s office, right?

The story in Colorado Springs is part of a template used by the race-hustling left to stir up racial resentment. Whenever Americans can be divided, they must be divided. Whenever an event such as Sanford, Ferguson or Colorado Springs offers the Washington Post and other outlets the opportunity to instill fear in black Americans, the opportunity cannot be missed.

They know that a sizable portion of their readership will never learn the truthful final chapter that the NAACP was not targeted, and therefore the seeds of racial division they sowed will grow. If 1,000 people read the original story about a bombing of an NAACP office, perhaps 100 will find out a tax preparer was targeted. The other 900 will become more racially grieved, more racially motivated.

This is how race hustlers operate.

The object is power. The more racially polarized one segment of the American population is, the easier it is for the left to win elections and gain power. Racial polarization pays for Al Sharpton’s limo. Racial polarization rates of 95 percent helped President Obama win elections.

So when reporters write a phony narrative inferring a possible NAACP bombing in Colorado Springs, they are engaged in a raw political and brazenly ideological exercise.

What happens next? Will all of the stories written with the aim of coating the events in Colorado Springs with a racial hue ever be updated to reflect the truth? Will the reporters call John Lewis back and challenge him for crying wolf? Will the editors caution their writers? I suspect the answer is no, no, and no.

So who are the reporters who led people down the racially inflamed path in Colorado Springs? Here are a few. Pay attention to whether or not they update their stories:

Florida Governor Rick Scott has opened the door to illegal aliens voting in Florida elections. He has decided that Florida will not appeal a ruling that limited the state’s ability to remove illegal aliens and non-citizens from Florida’s voter rolls. Even Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi opposes Scott’s abandonment of the appeal.

But do non-citizens and illegal aliens actually vote in Florida elections? Yes, hundreds of times, and more. Meet Yvonne Wigglesworth. Wigglesworth was but one of hundreds of non-citizens found by local news media investigative reports as having voted in multiple Florida elections. Wigglesworth is not a citizen.

Indeed, in 2012 the NBC affiliate in Fort Myers, Fla., reported that it had found at least 100 individuals in just one county who had been excused from jury duty because they were not citizens but who were registered to vote. Many had also voted in at least one election.

If Rick Scott doesn’t appeal a lower court ruling that says illegal aliens can’t be removed from the voter rolls before an election, it means illegal aliens and non-citizens will continue to vote in Florida elections. Remember, the presidency was decided in Florida by a few hundred votes. Florida has effectively chosen the last two Republican nominees.

Again, Fund:

It should have been a no-brainer for Governor Scott to appeal the “absurd” Eleventh Circuit Court ruling to the Supreme Court. He had the sole power to decide the issue. In a press release announcing the decision, his office claimed he had everything under control: “Florida is in an excellent position to conduct fair elections. … We will never stop working to eliminate fraud and abuse and make further improvements when they are needed.” Hogwash. It’s as if Governor Scott had decided to tie both his hands behind his back and then declared he was fully prepared to box a ten-round fight. Florida officials are gobsmacked over Scott’s decision not to appeal. So are national experts.

Fund notes that the decision may be driven by a desire to be politically correct and a young, naive, and frightened new staff that is unsophisticated in matters of rough politics. Whatever the reason, Scott’s decision threatens the integrity of future Florida elections, and should be reversed. He has until March 4 to change his mind.

It will also be interesting to see if any effort is made by Florida law enforcement officials, and even Eric Holder’s Justice Department, to prosecute any of the hundreds of demonstrable non-citizens who violated state and federal law by voting in Florida. If a lack of voter roll cleaning is combined with a failure to prosecute, we’ll know that the good things Scott did during his first term are being undone by a frightened retreat in the face of election lawlessness.

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner has introduced legislation which would have the effect of placing all of Virginia’s election laws under Justice Department oversight, and Virginia isn’t the only state that would fall into federal election receivership.

Sensenbrenner’s bill, H.R. 885, is co-sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and multiple members of the Congressional Black Caucus. It revives federal control through the Voting Rights Act over every state election law change. In 2013, the Supreme Court’s Shelby County vs. Holder decision struck down this power as an outdated and unconstitutional relic from a half-century ago.

Texas would also fall under immediate federal control if Sensenbrenner’s bill passes.

Other states well on their way to federal oversight include Ohio, Florida, New York, and California. States such as Louisiana would also fall under immediate federal control. (The text of H.R. 885 is here.)

Sensenbrenner and other far-left organizations argue that federal control over state elections is necessary to protect voting rights. Yet other parts of the Voting Rights Act are still in effect banning race discrimination, and were not touched by the Supreme Court.

Attorney General Eric Holder has claimed that federal control of state elections is necessary because voting rights are “under siege.” Yet Holder’s Justice Department hasn’t filed a single Voting Rights Act case in two years, and has only brought a handful in over six years, far fewer than the Bush administration brought during the same time period. If voting rights are under “siege,” thus justifying federal control over state elections, Holder doesn’t seem to be doing much about it besides advocating for expanded federal power over states.

In the last Congress, Rep. Sensenbrenner, a large number of Democrats, and a small number of Republicans introduced H.R. 3899. H.R. 3899 was identical to H.R. 885. The bill died in 2014, thanks to the opposition of Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and the presence of many Judiciary Committee members who hail from states that would be threatened with renewed federal control over state election laws. These members included Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX).

The bill reverses Shelby County, when the Supreme Court ruled that the “triggers” of the 1965 Voting Rights Act had become obsolete in 2013. The old triggers used turnout data from the Goldwater-Johnson, Nixon-Humphrey, and Nixon-McGovern races to determine if a state was covered for federal oversight. Using these triggers, sixteen states were covered in 2013 — including New Hampshire, South Dakota, Michigan, and New York as well as South Carolina, Texas, Arizona, and Mississippi, among others.

Sensenbrenner’s bill creates revived triggers. Here’s how it works: If a state has five Voting Rights Act violations in a fifteen-year span, including one violation by the state, all election laws at every level of state and federal government would have to be approved by the attorney general of the United States to ensure they are free from racial discrimination.

Before Shelby, Eric Holder used this power to block election integrity laws like citizenship verification in Georgia, changes to early voting days in Florida, and voter identification laws in Texas and South Carolina. Beyond these high-profile cases, in lesser cases this federal power was routinely used to advance the interests of left-wing groups like the ACLU and NAACP, sometimes to such a degree that federal courts imposed sanctions on Justice Department lawyers for abusing the oversight power.

Sensenbrenner’s bill does nothing to mitigate this history of abuse of power. (I filed a brief to the Supreme Court in Shebly as amicus detailing how this abuse of power has manifested over the years.)

Using Sensenbrenner’s proposed new triggers, Virginia would fall under federal government oversight immediately for every election law change under his bill.

Virginia satisfies Sensenbrenner’s new triggers. Remember, under Sensenbrenner’s proposal, one statewide violation and four violations by any local or county government trigger federal oversight, including past administrative objections by the attorney general. Five strikes, and you’re in.

Here are the cases which would capture Virginia for Justice Department control:

One: The Justice Department objected to a redistricting plan in Northampton County in 2003. Strike One.

Two: The Justice Department objected to a redistricting plan in Cumberland County in 2003. Strike Two.

Three: The Justice Department objected to a redistricting plan in Pittsylvania County in 2002. Strike Three.

Four: The Justice Department objected to another Northampton County redistricting plan in 2003. Strike Four.

Five: Virginia has a recently decided statewide case arising out of 2012 congressional redistricting. In Page vs. Virginia State Board of Elections, a federal three-judge panel found that Virginia violated the Constitution when it drew a redistricting plan to create minority black congressional districts.

Presto — Virginia would fall under federal control, and the Department of Justice bureaucrats would leverage federal power over every election in the state. Virginia faces this perverse outcome: a plan created black-majority congressional districts so that the Justice Department would approve the plan, then a federal court finds (after the Shelby ruling struck down the DOJ power) that creating those black-majority districts violates the law, and that violation will be used to place Virginia back under federal control.

Virginia has suffered constitutional whiplash, and Sensenbrenner’s bill would keep it going.

But it’s even worse for Virginia. Just before the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby, Virginia was only partly covered by federal oversight. Some counties were in, and some counties were out. If Mr. Sensenbrenner’s bill becomes law, then every single town, city, county, and school board in Virginia will be under Justice Department control for election law changes. The state will be covered also. This is a state that elected Doug Wilder as governor, an African-American.

Ironically, proponents of federal control cited Virginia to the Supreme Court as a state which had local jurisdictions escape federal oversight by bailing out. They pointed to their escape as showing that the law was not overly onerous. Sensenbrenner’s bill would deliver a cruel reversal of that bailout history.

In the last Congress, some Republicans from states on the cusp of federal control, such as Ohio, were cosponsors of H.R. 3899. As of now, they are not cosponsoring Sensenbrenner’s latest push to reverse the Supreme Court and revive federal control over state elections. Only six other Republicans have now joined Sensenbrenner’s effort to expand federal power.

Far-left advocates of Sensenbrenner’s bill are demanding a hearing to build momentum behind the effort. The better choice is to let Mr. Sensenbrenner’s bill quietly die in this Congress the same way it died in the last Congress.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder know how to scare minority voters. In the State of the Union, Obama spoke of “too many” Americans being denied the right to vote. He couldn’t name any. Afterwards, Holder told a Martin Luther King Day celebration at the Justice Department that the “right to vote is under siege.” If the right to vote is truly under siege, as they claim, Holder’s Justice Department sure hasn’t done much about it.

The Justice Department’s own website reveals either that Obama and Holder are crying wolf about this siege against voting rights, or they aren’t doing their job to protect the right to vote. A glance at the list of DOJ Voting Section litigation shows that Justice Department lawyers took an extended sabbatical in 2014 – not filing a single case to protect minority voters under the Voting Rights Act.

If the siege were real, they should have brought lawsuits to stop the siege, yet they didn’t.

The last case filed by Holder’s Justice Department to fight the “siege” against minority voting rights was in September 2013. That’s seventeen months Holder did nothing to stop the “siege” on voting rights. Not since the fall of 2013 has a case been filed to address this purported crisis imperiling the right to vote.

The record before 2013 was even worse.

From 2009, when I filed United States v. Lake Park, the Department of Justice under Holder didn’t file another case under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act until 2013, and then only to attack voter ID. (Section 2 is the ban on racial discrimination in voting.)

Eric Holder took a multi-year slumber while the “siege” raged.

When they claim the right to vote is under siege, they darn well better show they are doing something about it, else it looks like the president and attorney general are crying wolf, which of course they are.

It’s not for a lack of money either that they’ve done nothing. The Voting Section at the Justice Department effectively doubled in size when the Supreme Court struck down a part of the Voting Rights Act that mandated that every state and locality get Holder’s approval for any election law change in sixteen states. When the court ruled in June 2013 that the standards for capturing these sixteen states were hopelessly, and unconstitutionally, outdated, half the staff in the Voting Section suddenly had nothing to do.

Were there staff cutbacks? Did the Justice Department do what any business making an obsolete product would do? Of course not — this is the government we’re talking about. Instead, Obama’s budget asked for $103,000,000 more for the Civil Rights Division while slashing funding for the FBI. Holder’s budget request is asking Congress to fund 179 new lawyers for the Civil Rights Division!

The actual litigation record of the Obama-Holder era of voting rights enforcement since 2009 demonstrates that the president and attorney general are crying wolf about a voting rights “siege,” or they aren’t doing anything about it. As I’ve written with Hans von Spakovsky, the only area where Holder’s voting rights enforcement record excels is cooking up the numbers to appear they are doing more than they are.

Despite puffery and bluster to the contrary, Obama’s record of bringing cases to protect voting rights is a joke compared to the vigorous and industrious record of the Bush Justice Department. Obama’s record is all talk; Bush’s record was all action.

But talk is the new measure of success in this administration. I saw firsthand the change in philosophies after the inauguration in 2009. The age of Bush was about bringing and winning cases anywhere a case could be proven. The Obama version of voting rights enforcement is to hold meetings, group discussions, more meetings, and an occasional case every few years, all the while convincing your gullible supporters you have resurrected the Voting Rights Act because voting rights are under siege.

A seventeen-month slumber betrays the lie. A four-year period of inactivity says the Holder’s siege is fiction. Otherwise Holder could have fought the siege with Section 2 lawsuits.

This lie is especially ironic considering that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pam Karlan is now overseeing the Voting Section. Karlan, oft mentioned as a Supreme Court possibility because of her rabid liberalism, was a frequent and dishonest critic of the Bush administration’s civil rights enforcement.

Pam Karlan

Karlan published demonstrably false scholarship when she wrote at the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy:

For five of the eight years of the Bush Administration, [they] brought no Voting Rights Act cases of its own except for one case protecting white voters.

As I noted in 2013, Kalan’s scholarship “is demonstrably false; any visit to the DOJ website demonstrates this. . . . Yet the record shows that cases were brought under the Voting Rights Act to protect non-white racial minorities in all eight of the eight years of the Bush administration.”

I contacted the Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy about her false scholarship and they said it is up to the author to correct the author’s mistakes. So far, Karlan has not done so. Like President Obama and her boss Eric Holder, Karlan suffers no consequences for her dishonesty about voting-rights enforcement.

Instead of issuing apologies and corrections, Holder and Obama and their partners in the permanent race agitation industry have gotten busy agitating. Getting caught exaggerating never slows them down. They’ve badgered people like Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA, aka Holder target #2) and demanded meetings from the House GOP whip after it was revealed that over a decade ago he spoke to a crowd not acceptable to the permanent race agitation industry.

Tops on the agenda was to guilt Scalise into supporting restored federal-approval power over state election law changes that the Court struck down in Shelby County.

Scalise will certainly get an earful of Holder’s phony “siege” rhetoric and the president’s claim that too many are being denied the right to vote. But Mr. Scalise need only look at Holder’s record of inactivity to see that the siege must not be terribly potent.

Instead, Scalise should ignore those who cry wolf. He should demand answers about why the calls to resurrect federal oversight of state election law changes are built on a lie. Scalise might talk to congressmen from Ohio who, in the last Congress, cosponsored legislation to resurrect this federal oversight yet were never told that the legislation would capture their own state of Ohio to be placed under DOJ control.

Once upon a time, the civil rights movement held the moral high ground. Then it became the civil rights industry. Sadly, today that industry is built on fear, phony rhetoric, and falsity. President Obama and General Holder are crying wolf about threats to voting rights. They want to renew federal power over state elections and to keep their political allies in the government fully employed. They must believe Americans will believe anything.

The video of ISIS barbarians burning to death a Jordanian pilot sure makes one empathize with Israel. Thirty years ago, Israel was an oasis of sanity surrounded by nation-states essentially hostile but essentially tamed. Now, Israel is surrounded by an exploding movement of bloodthirsty ISIS murderers. Contrary to what President Obama would have you believe, the I in ISIS doesn’t stand for International.

What is exploding around Israel in the Middle East is now a modern death cult. Only in a culture as warped and backwards as the Middle East could a video of a human being burned alive in a cage attract supporters. Yet the American left wailed about Abu Ghraib for months.

Yes, yes, America is better than that. We’ve heard it all before. Tool around the internet a bit and you’ll find the voices most critical of Abu Ghraib seem to have little to say about the growing ISIS barbarity in the Middle East.

That’s because they are incapable of outrage against evil unless they can brand it as American.

What is exploding in the Middle East is a death cult filled with adults who have never morally evolved past the strange child who plucks the wings off of flies. It is a death cult from the Middle Ages.

When Saint Pope John Paul II and his successor Francis speak relentlessly of a “culture of life,” many only hear the issue of abortion. But we are seeing through the barbarity of ISIS that a culture of life means much more. It is a linear promise that extends from arguments for life in the United States to moral barriers to the ISIS barbarity.

Some say that the actions of ISIS are in literal accord with the teachings of Islam. Others, including the last two presidents, aggressively disagree. I am no Islamic scholar, but if the teachings of Islam can support the barbarity against the innocent by ISIS in the slightest way, the world is in for a wicked future.

Yet when Obama makes the obligatory condemnation of ISIS barbarity, it is reminiscent of President Jimmy Carter making the obligatory condemnation of the Soviet Union. The words are there, but little else.

The Jewish people have endured what happens when a death cult acquires the means of mass extermination. After this unique horror ended, the Jewish people were given a homeland, surrounded by enemies unwilling to accept their presence. It forever puzzles me that wherever the Jewish people may be found, wicked and bloodthirsty people seek to do them harm.

The steady stream of videos showing the innocent being burned alive or their heads sliced off with a hunting knife is nothing less than a Satanic bloodlust. It is no accident that these murderers have graduated to fire. Expect more of the same until the civilized world gathers itself to oppose them in effective ways.

What should concern everyone who places value on life and religious freedom is that the murderers are not lunatics. They are calculated, savvy and entirely convinced they are following the commands of their religion. If they continue to attract adherents in the Middle East, and even in east London or Paris, the world is in trouble.

What the 2014 midterm election means might depend on where you spend most of your time. If you spend most of your time inside the Beltway, the midterms mean voters want the Republicans to govern. Inside the beltway, the election means voters want gridlock to end, and Republicans should work with Democrats to make Washington work. It’s the syrupy (and catchy) new McDonald’s ad where donkeys hug elephants, and lumberjacks give bouquets to trees.

But to Republicans outside the beltway, the mandate from 2014 is much different, and much simpler. The voters who sent huge GOP majorities to the House and retook the Senate had one central message: stop Obama.

Republicans gained huge majorities in 2014 because patience with Obama has worn thin. Six years of lawlessness, government overreach, and a dangerous foreign policy that may have been designed by the same person who designed the McDonald’s ads have exhausted the patience of Americans outside the beltway.

The question heading into the State of the Union this week is whether the Republican Party listens to the whispers inside the beltway or the loud, clear mandate from the rest of America.

To help the GOP understand the meaning of the 2014 midterms, a guiding policy document has been provided by conservative leaders (myself included), appropriately called the Mandate. The terms of the Mandate are simple, and reflect the views of the voters who put the GOP in leadership:

Stop the President’s promised “Fundamental Transformation” of the country,

End Executive branch overreach.

Restore Constitutional balance of power among the three branches of government.

Bring an end to the perennially unpopular Affordable Care Act.

Stop the President’s Executive Amnesty initiatives.

Hold the Executive branch accountable for its myriad abuses of power and its national security failures both foreign and domestic.

Put the interests of the United States of America first among nations.

These are the issues that resonate with a broad cross section of Americans. Whether or not the Republicans have the fortitude and skill to implement this mandate is the test of this Congress.

For example, the interests of the United States are being challenged all over the world by the threat of Islamic terror and nuclear-armed states. The response of the Obama administration? Cut terrorists free and give Iran more time.

Obama ignores the law to fundamentally transform the nation by allowing millions of illegal aliens to stay in the United States. The response by the GOP remains uncertain.

Obamacare is harming Americans and intruding on constitutional rights. Will Republicans “fix” parts, thus ensuring permanence to the disaster, or will Republicans lay the rhetorical and legislative groundwork for full repeal?

The next two years will say a great deal about the Republican Party. Does the GOP understand Obama’s march through the institutions and the fundamental transformation he has undertaken? Does it have the understanding to stop and reverse it? Or has the GOP ceased being the party of Reagan, becoming content simply to govern rather than advance the cause of liberty? The answer to that question is easy to figure out, depending on how the Republican Party uses the mandate they received just two months ago.

We learned today that Paris barbarian Cherif Kouachi was sentenced some time ago in France for terrorist recruitment. He got a whopping three years, and all but 18 months were suspended. It seems the Gitmo model is the better model. Not surprisingly, President Obama is obsessed with shutting it down. Indefinite detention or life detention without any chance of release seem the better punishments for terrorists. The recidivism rate among these young male jihadists is beyond our measures. It’s time that they are put behind bars, forever, when they are caught.

2. Islamic Evil Is Rising.

Barbarians who believe they are acting consistent with Islamic teaching are an existential threat to civilization now and in the foreseeable future. We’ve heard this so often since September 11, that it is easy to lose sight of the civilizational struggle that reawakened in Iran in 1979.

Are the barbarians in Paris acting in accordance with Islam, or contrary to Islam? Does it really matter? They will tell you they are acting in accordance with Islam. They will mouth prayers from that religion as they kill.

Unfortunately, this civilizational friction between the west and Islam has ebbed and flowed across the centuries. It is nothing new. Islam threatened the gates of Vienna and the Crusades reached the Holy Land. Anyone who thinks history stops is delusional.

There is one and only one answer to this: reformation. Islam must reform the same way Christianity reformed and matured centuries ago. The strained attempts by some to claim Christians have a similar theological justification for violence against non-Christians are purely delusional. King John does not represent Christian theology of the last few centuries (not that anyone on the left understands this).

3. Evil Is Rising and the Alarm Is Ignored.

It is natural to downplay any gathering storm. Nobody wants to believe the future could be bloodier than the past. The future is always under control, until it isn’t.

How many more beheadings, schoolhouse massacres, exploding airplanes, exploding cafes, threats, stabbings, mutilations, vengeance murders and bloodbaths will it take to awaken the good and mighty in our civilization? Will the cold-blooded execution of a Paris policeman do it? I doubt it. Nothing else has.

Churchill experienced the frustration of having a decade of warnings ignored by the media, the British public and even his own Tory party. It took a calamity for the alarm to be heard. In the West in 2015, even calamity seems inadequate.